Fact Check: No clear answer on Perry-Obama dialogue about border

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican, said he wrote President Barack Obama in May 2012, saying that the government ignored the increasing flow of children across the U.S.-Mexico border.

The facts: Perry gave a June 17 interview to “Fox & Friends” in which he said that “we flagged this issue in 2012 and have yet to even have a response, as far as I know, from, not just, not from the president, but not even from his administration.”

PolitiFact.com asked Perry spokeswoman Lucy Nashed, who said the letters Perry referenced were sent to Obama and a Homeland Security official, respectively, by Perry and a gubernatorial aide.

A May 4 letter to the president accused the Obama administration of failing to work with the home countries of unaccompanied minors entering the United States to arrange for their return, the Dallas Morning News reported.

Six days later, Perry adviser Chelsea Buchholtz sent a letter to Homeland Security official Kelly Ryan, thanking Ryan for a conference call that brought together various agencies to discuss the unaccompanied children surging into Texas, PolifiFact.com said. Obama administration officials were part of that call.

PolitiFact.com reported that Buchholtz also requested answers to 18 questions about the numbers of children, ending with: “Please provide this information categorized by nationality for the last 10 fiscal years.”

PolitiFact.com used the Texas Public Information Act to ask Perry’s office for texts, emails, letters or other documented evidence of federal responses to the letters. Attorney Chris Sterner replied by email there was “no information responsive to your request.”

PolitiFact.com then shared Sterner’s response with the White House. Obama spokesman Shawn Turner replied that while Perry’s letter “did not make any requests of the president, we did respond to his concerns.”

When asked for dates and times of the briefings, Turner said he didn’t have such specifics.

While Obama administration officials did respond via the conference call to the border situation problem, PolitiFact.com found no documentation of a formal administration reply.